Walsh leaves legacy of lasting influence

Tuesday

Jul 31, 2007 at 12:01 AMJul 31, 2007 at 10:19 AM

Bill Walsh planted a National Football League coaching tree.

Across the league, there are almost bottomless roots of greatness that have taken hold and spread considerable branches of success, thanks to Walsh's uncanny intuition for spotting coaching talent, vision and temperament.

Walsh, who died at the age of 75 yesterday, unearthed them. Quick minds, stout hearts and strong personalities, traits much like his own — they were men much like him. They would subsequently bloom into multitudes of abundant NFL coaching success.

The forest was planted in 1979, when Walsh was convinced by a brash young NFL owner to move over from Stanford and rebuild his moribund franchise.

So give Eddie DeBartolo due credit for turning some soil.

As Walsh overhauled the 49ers from 2-14 in 1979 into a Super Bowl champion in only three seasons, a remarkable succession of young coaches was spawned from the 49ers' burgeoning dynasty.

Today, 14 of the NFL's 32 head coaches are either direct descendants, or second- and-third generation disciples, of the Walsh NFL coaching empire.

Certainly you can argue that the many branches extending from the legends and lessons of Paul Brown, George Halas, Sid Gillman, Tom Landry and Al Davis exerted considerable influence of their own.

But Walsh — a sapling borne from the fertile mind of Gillman's deep-ball passing lust — might have been the grandest seed of them all.

Gillman, the acknowledged Pro Football Hall of Fame father of the modern NFL passing game, then Davis, the genius behind the vertical passing attack, handed off a young Walsh to Brown in Cincinnati in 1968.

And Brown, another Hall of Famer who is credited with being the chief architect of the modern NFL offense, recognized the greatness simmering inside the mind of his 36-year-old protege. He made the scholarly Walsh the offensive coordinator of his expansion Bengals franchise.

Walsh then found a willing and powerful arm in the likes of a young quarterback named Greg Cook, the AFL's rookie of the year in 1969. Cook passed for 1,854 yards that season, despite feeling a suspicious pop in his throwing shoulder.

No one realized that Cook's right shoulder and elbow had been irreparably damaged midway through his rookie season. Cook's promising football career would end in 1973.

And Walsh had to retool.

Pure arm strength from an exceptional quarterback couldn't do it all, the coach surmised. So he devised an elaborate offensive choreography. His scheme was built on timing, precision, multiple sets, motion and quick drops by a powerful, smart quarterback — the maestro whose footwork and vision conducted the entire symphony.

Eventually, the football would get downfield in a hurry, either through the air or in the hands of a running back set free by the frenzy of four or five receivers and tight ends swarming in routes.

Such genius later carried Walsh to three Super Bowl victories.

— Holmgren, whom Walsh hired in 1981 as an offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, turned out five current or former NFL head coaches under his watch in Green Bay and Seattle: Mike Sherman, Andy Reid, Steve Mariucci, Marty Mornhinweg and Brad Childress.

— Green joined the 49ers as a receivers coach in 1986. Later, as head coach of the Vikings, he would hire Brian Billick, who later schooled Jack Del Rio; Mike Tice, who brought along Scott Linehan; and Tony Dungy, coach of the Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts, whose legacy includes three NFL head coaching contemporaries — Lovie Smith, Mike Tomlin and Rod Marinelli.

— Seifert, a defensive specialist who joined Walsh's 49ers staff in 1980 as a position coach and later defensive coordinator, found coaching gems in Mike Shanahan and Jeff Fisher.